[Air-L] facebook research - need some thoughts on facebook and research ethics

[marybeth deline]

Hi everyone,

My name's Mary Beth Deline and I'm currently a graduate candidate at  
the University of Waterloo - I'm hoping I can get some help from the  
list re: research ethics and Facebook. I'm currently checking out how  
feasible my thesis proposal is, which concerns using Facebook as a  
site for an intervention - either by developing an application or  
posting information on participant's walls (these participant's would  
have been recruited beforehand). I've contacted Facebook and they  
referred me to their Terms of Services and said that was all they  
could do for me. I'm having trouble finding someone who can help me  
match that (and their Developer Terms of Service) up to the Canadian  
Tri-Council ethical guidelines.

If anyone has any experience using Facebook as an intervention site,  
or is able to provide guidance/direction on FB and research ethics  
(either American or Canadian), could you please get in touch with me,  
on or off the list? I've reviewed the Tri-Council's Feb 08  
recommendation paper on Internet research and have searched the  
archives on this list as well but haven't been able to find anything  
specifically about using FB as a research 'site'. Thanks in advance,
MB

mdeline at alumni.sfu.ca